The President has been voting ‘present’ for most of the first five weeks of the [oil spill] disaster. It’s not as if it’s the first time Obama tried to avoid responsibility for an issue or refuse to show leadership. Many of us wrote extensively about Obama’s pattern of avoidance during the election — and suggested that Democrats try Obama in a lesser executive position first, such as Governor of Illinois, before nominating him for the top spot, in order to make sure he was up for the job. . . . Only those who willingly allowed themselves to be enchanted by charisma and public relations could possibly act surprised when inexperience leads to incompetence.

I do agree that good teachers are paid too little. It’s because we waste so much money paying all the deadbeats whose jobs are guaranteed by the sweetheart deals their unions worked out with the government.

Found out about this from Ace (who else?) and Hot Air. I have to assume that this bit of info about “don’t ask, don’t tell” comes from the same poll, but I’m not 100% certain and don’t want to take the time to do the research to confirm.

Anyway, the gist of it is this: 10% of active-duty troops have said they would not re-enlist if the policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” were stopped. That is, if gays were allowed to be openly gay in the military, 10% of the troops would look for work elsewhere.

Most active-duty service members continue to oppose President-elect Barack Obamaâ€™s campaign pledge to end the â€œdonâ€™t ask, donâ€™t tellâ€ policy to allow gays to serve openly in the military, a Military Times survey shows.

Moreover, if the policy was repealed, nearly 10 percent of respondents said they would not re-enlist or extend their service, and 14 percent said they would consider terminating their careers after serving their obligated tours.

Why is this significant? Because Obama’s press secretary has promised to kill “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

A great many progressive liberals find fault with this policy and they desire a military that embraces people’s various sexual lifestyles in an open, respectful way. Unfortunately, a great many progressive liberals have absolutely no desire to serve in the military — whether don’t ask, don’t tell is the law or not — which means that the military will continue recruiting from a population which does not share the enlightened, humane, pro-homosexuality goo-goo of the progressive liberals.

Don’t ask, don’t tell makes military service less attractive to gays and progressive liberals. But they, largely, are not inclined to serve in any event. Repealing the code makes service less attractive to traditionalists and, yes, conservatives (as well as blacks and Hispanics) who tend to be liberal on many issues but not particularly progressive about homosexuality) who actually are inclined to serve.

One can argue about the fairness but those actually willing to join the club ought to have some say in its rules. Those unwilling to join should have far less a say.

If Gleen Grenwald and other humane, compassionate, forward-thinking liberals announce their intention to sign up in great enough numbers to offset the losses among the current cohort of recruits, fine, we can dispense with the issue of how this policy affects the military’s actual purpose — to fight and win wars. And then we can have the debate solely on the grounds the liberals wish to have it on, on the questions of fairness and dignity and openness to diverse sexual orientations. And other gay [stuff] of this nature.

But somehow I doubt that any such large-scale pledge to serve will be forthcoming.

Me too.

13 January 3:44pm BST: Matt P. weighs in with an angle that hadn’t occurred to me:

The one thing that hit me right away about this is that repealing don’t ask don’t tell is just one more way for BHO to reduce defense spending. Not only that, he could point to the decrease in spending being a result of “natural” attrition and possibly not have to pay as much of a political consequence because, “People just aren’t willing to sign up like they used to.”

I read an article awhile back on the Op-Ed page of the WSJ in which the author argued for Keynesian-style spending on the military. At least, he said, if you’re going to spend huge amounts of money, you might as well spend it on things that are useful rather than just making stuff up like, “green jobs.” He specifically outlined increasing the military budget to pay for big ticket items–new jet fighters, expensive parts for destroyers and carriers and other things along those lines.

Though the whole Keynesian approach doesn’t appeal to me the way it does to (apparently) Obama, I could at least support spending large amounts of money of military modernization projects & recruiting.

I’m afraid, however, that Matt P. is right and the military won’t be getting a dime. More “green” jobs!

The violence wasnâ€™t captured on camera this time; read the boss for a description of that. The mediaâ€™s unwilling to place blame where it belongs in these incidents since the identities of the harassers and harassed confound the established Narrative, so they resort instead to feeble, evenhanded tsk-tsking about how â€œboth sidesâ€ need to â€œcool down.â€ Look out for that as the coverage of this breaks big.

Thereâ€™s only one man now who can rescue Prop 8 opponents from the terrible trappings of democracy â€” and luckily, not only has he had a lot of practice at it, this particular issue is one of his specialties. Expect a major 5-4 equal protection decision striking down the referendum sometime next year, with you-know-who writing for the majority. A surefire consolation prize for conservatives? Angriest Scalia dissent evah.

Looks like I’m going to have to break out my judicial activism rant after all.

They always said John McCain played well as an underdog. And it looks like this election is no different. From everything I can gather, trends are moving his direction. I guess the only question is whether or not there is enough time.

60 hours until votes are counted in Minnesota, Barack Obamaâ€™s advantage over John McCain is back inside the margin of sampling error, according to SurveyUSAâ€™s final look at one of 2008â€™s most interesting states. Obama 49%, McCain 46%, in interviewing underwritten by KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, WDIO-TV Duluth and KAAL-TV Rochester, 10/30/08 through 11/01/08. Obama led by 6 two weeks ago, now by 3. The late break to the GOP is occurring among men and seniors.

Yup. We got an election on our hands.

I’m not prepared to add Minnesota to the list of 5, but if you’re from Minnesota, by all means, GOTV. If you live close (Dakotas, etc.) and feel like you speak the language (northern continental American), you too should call Minnesotans. Even if we can’t get the state to go for McCain, the least we can do is keep that idiot Franken out of the Senate.

The true believers I mean. The Obamabots. These are the guys that, when called upon by the campaign, send form letter emails to websites, radio stations, newspapers, etc., trying to shut up and shut down dissenting voices. Hot Air documented it when they tried to do it to Stanley Kurtz and my NB colleague Warner Todd Huston wrote about it when they did the same thing, a couple of weeks later.

What’s funny is that few, if any, of the callers, email form fillers, etc, get the irony of the fact that they are stifling dissent and yet, when pressed to go beyond the talking points, have no idea what to say. (It’s ironic because they’re being told to shut-up people who are “anti-intelligence” and yet they can’t intelligently go off the Obama camp issued cheat sheet) They only repeat what the Obama campaign has told them to say. Or write. Or whatever. This is why they’re called Obamabots.

This is the type of community organizing Obama has brought to the Presidential campaign. It is a community organized and unified around a set of official, Obama campaign-prepped talking points that seeks to shut up everyone else.

Now, even the supposed “grass roots” videos slamming first McCain and now Palin have been shown, by Ace, to be nothing more than Obama campaign produced commercials–fed to their soldiers at DU, dKos, and Huffington Post as though they were the real thing. Even the Obama campaign’s grass roots are manufactured (you see, that’s why they call it astroturf).

Obama Connected PR Firm Produces, Uploads Lying Anti-Palin Ad on YouTube, Then Pushes it Virally as “Grassroots” Effort; PR Exec Sockpuppets Praise Video for “Getting the Truth Out;” Company Employee Uploads it to Obama Smear Clearinghouse Daily Kos and Urges Readers to Send it Out to Ten People Each

Look. I despise campaign finance reform as much as the next lover of free speech, but just because I don’t like the law, doesn’t mean I think it can or should be broken. Everything that’s coming out about the Obama camp’s involvement in this stuff looks like the breaking of campaign laws. They ought to pay a price–both monetarily and in the court of public opinion. People need to see their farcical field-turf campaign for what it is–a joke.